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I'm a little confused regarding the cooling though. One person suggested I cool faster, while others are suggesting ways to cool slower (with the fiber blanket).

It always depends on the glaze. The person who suggested cooling faster is probably right if you're trying to get glossy clear. For some glazes, especially mattes, slow cooling is better. For some, super slow cooling is best. Some potters use incredibly complicated holds and ramp downs for cooling saturated iron glazes. The only way to find out what works best is by testing.

I have a small test kiln that loses heat pretty fast. I bought enough 1 inch Kaowool blanket to put a couple of layers across the top of the kiln. This did slow down the heat loss. It also helped improve the ramp up to cone 6.

It seems common sense to assume that more heat is escaping through the top of the kiln, but that is not the case. All else being equal, just as much heat is escaping through the sides and bottom so it would help just as much to put a layer of kaowool under the kiln as on top of it.

Along with other clays, I use B-Mix 5 (which is really a cone 6 clay), B-Mix 10, and B-Mix Woodfire and have not had problems with cracking. It is unlikely, but possible that both of you got a bad batch of B-Mix 5. Laguna sometimes screws up their clays. I got a bad batch of Frost 5 once and had to go to great extremes (adding a little paper) to fix it and warned lots of people away from Frost because of cracking only to discover when someone here pointed out to me that she had just made a complete dinner set out of Frost with no cracking problem, that I had bought a bad batch of Frost.

Just because it is rated as a cone 10 kiln doesn't mean it will be practical to fire it to cone 10. It may have been able to reach cone 10 when new but not now or not in a reasonable time. Even if the kiln will get to cone 10 in a reasonable time it is still, unless you have some good reason for firing to cone 10, not a good idea to fire that high.

Jim

Pfff, nonsense Jim! Crank that baby up to "11"!

Hmmmm....that would be a great idea for a ceramic related poster and/ or t-shirt.

Fat chance that her kiln will get to cone 11. Somebody who wood fires to cone 13 with us has a t-shirt that says, "Cone 13"... BTW, which do you mean would make a good T-shirt "Crank that baby up to 11!" or "Pfff, Nonsense Jim!"?